If you look at a bunch of virtue sets, the opposed virtues in each set tend to fall into two main types.

I wonder if there’s a connection to a different line of thought I’ve been having.

In so many things, I have noticed, there is some way of being carefree, passionate, vital, powerful, in the moment, free. But those ways aren’t practical.  They can go wrong pretty badly.

So you have the carefree virtues and the care-taking virtues.

What this feels like from the inside is something beautiful and passionate and strong that keeps getting killed by problems, pain, fears, and worries.

The only way out is to face it. The free passionate thing can no longer be the whisp that flits through the cracks of gray reality.

It must become the master of the realities and the practicalities.

Do not flee. Make your empire of consequences.

Puberty is hard these days.  It happens earlier and with far fewer onramps to adulthood.  And with bad physical and mental diets and self destructive models for how to respond.

All bad.

I think at the root is that when you enter puberty is when you discover you are missing half.  You discover you are incomplete.  Before you weren’t grown up enough to know.

We rather enjoyed the appearance of the four lepers in 2 Kings chapter 7, those low-class stumblers-upon of big happenings. If I were staging this chapter, would I portray them as Dogberry, Touchstone, C3PO, and Peregrin Took? Or maybe Harpo, Chico, Zeppo, and Groucho?

The Leviticus temple rites are quite clear. No unleavened bread.

I have a few thoughts about that. Not comprehensive. (more…)

The Israelites on Exodus keep getting in trouble for hankering after the flesh pots of Egypt.

They should have been willing to let them go. They should have been less attached to earthly things, one thinks. Indeed, that seems to be a strong message of the Exodus. Do not settle down too much, be willing to up stakes and leave, the Christian is a wanderer and a pilgrim in this life.

But the Israelite exodus had a destination, Canaan, which is very much part of this mortal life, and they are promised it for an inheritance forever. There they get in trouble too, for not making the place sufficiently their own.

I do not know what to make of it. (more…)

Knock knock

Who’s there?

You are a rotten cupcake

Gails of laughter

Grrrrr I pretend to growl.

Oh no you are a nice cupcake!

We describe a certain skies or memories as golden. As if they were valuable because they remind us of gold.

In truth we value gold just because it reminds us of them. Summer sun going down is the true gold.

Every mountain is sacred, my daughter says

Each mountain is a mountain of the Lord

[Pharisees] love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,

And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi.

Matthew 23: 6-7

Well of course they love that stuff. That stuff is heady.

I recently have had a number of dealings with some Latin Americans. Because I’m American, because I speak veddy proper Castilian, and because they are respectful people–or perhaps because they have the inner wisdom to discern my true grandeur haha– that is it no doubt – they treat me as a distinguished person. It feels good, man. Very good. It also feels just a little off. The pleasure is not altogether wholesome.

I think the only pure version of that feeling I have ever had is being a father.

There is a point to be made here about God’s glory and his fatherhood.

And thou shalt make an altar to burn incense upon: of shittim wood shalt thou make it.

A cubit shall be the length thereof, and a cubit the breadth thereof; foursquare shall it be: and two cubits shall be the height thereof: the horns thereof shall be of the same.

One of the messages of the OT for me is that God is no respecter of personality types.

There are people who like this kind of thing.

Maybe everybody likes this kind of thing if its something they love enough.

Some people are second order vegans for the health benefits, and I’m not arguing against that but for me it’s really about being ethical.  So much of the jaguar meat you get at the store comes from factory farmed jaguars and I don’t think that’s right